APA Issues First-ever Guidelines for Practice with Men and Boys

For the first time ever, APA is releasing guidelines to help psychologists work with men and boys.

At first blush, this may seem unnecessary. For decades, psychology
focused on men (particularly white men), to the exclusion of all others.
And men still dominate professionally and politically: As of 2018, 95.2
percent of chief operating officers at Fortune 500 companies were men.
According to a 2017 analysis by Fortune, in 16 of the top companies, 80
percent of all high-ranking executives were male. Meanwhile, the 115th
Congress, which began in 2017, was 81 percent male.

But something is amiss for men as well. Men commit 90 percent of
homicides in the United States and represent 77 percent of homicide
victims. They’re the demographic group most at risk of being victimized
by violent crime. They are 3.5 times more likely than women to die by
suicide, and their life expectancy is 4.9 years shorter than women’s.
Boys are far more likely to be diagnosed with attention-deficit
hyperactivity disorder than girls, and they face harsher punishments in
school—especially boys of color.

APA’s new Guidelines for Psychological Practice With Boys and Men
strive to recognize and address these problems in boys and men while
remaining sensitive to the field’s androcentric past. Thirteen years in
the making, they draw on more than 40 years of research showing that
traditional masculinity is psychologically harmful and that socializing
boys to suppress their emotions causes damage that echoes both inwardly
and outwardly.

APA’s Guidelines for Psychological Practice With Girls and Women were issued in 2007 and, like the guidelines for men and boys, aim to help practitioners assist their patients despite social forces that can harm mental health. Many researchers who study femininity also work on masculinity: Several contributors to the guidelines for girls and women have also contributed to the new guidelines for boys and men.

“Though men benefit from patriarchy, they are also impinged upon by patriarchy,” says Ronald F. Levant, EdD, a professor emeritus of psychology at the University of Akron and co-editor of the APA volume “The Psychology of Men and Masculinities.” Levant was APA president in 2005 when the guideline-drafting process began and was instrumental in securing funding and support to get the process started. . .

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